


and you fancy yourself reborn

by ilia



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M, Male Byleth - Freeform, Mentions of sexual abuse if you squint, Reunions, Yuri's little leather bound book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:08:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24120061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilia/pseuds/ilia
Summary: After his return to Garreg Mach, Byleth finds Yuri waiting.
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 9
Kudos: 131





	and you fancy yourself reborn

The first time Byleth sees Yuri since his return, he’s leaning against one of the walls in the Great Hall directly opposite the room Byleth has been occupying for the last couple of hours with Rhea and Seteth. The placement is so intentional Byleth assumes Yuri must be here for him.

A glance Yuri's way confirms it—the not-so-subtle tangling of Yuri’s lilac gaze in his own, and Byleth says his goodbyes to the Church representatives both. Perhaps a little too quickly to be polite, though he’s never much cared for politeness when it came to either of them as much as he’s been careful not to peeve them beyond reason. The pair of purple eyes that look at him have him feeling a sort of strain in the center of his chest, a strain he’s curiously drawn to more than not—in the mere day since awakening with sea foam hair and the world sped five years beneath his stagnant feet, Byleth has been too overwhelmed to feel much of anything at all.

Since his return to the Monastery there have been people everywhere, students, crushing hugs, questions, so much stimulation Byleth thinks he might have broken from it. But from Yuri, nothing, not even a sighting.

Until now.

It’s funny, Byleth thinks as he steps towards where Yuri is leaning against the wall. Considering it all, it's Yuri’s absence he has felt hurting in the hollow of his gut most of all.

“Did you need me for something?”

Yuri smiles. “Straight to the point, aren’t you? Some things never change.” He shifts, drags a hand along his hair. The hall is emptying some, voices resonating high up to the rafters as their owners depart. They fade until there is only the both of them; Byleth, uncomfortable in a body he doesn’t quite remember. And Yuri.

“You’re back,” Yuri says, and it’s accompanied by the familiar lilt on his tongue, the one that has Byleth wondering if Yuri is flirting or being condescending or some innocuous combination of the two.

“I’m back,” Byleth confirms, his hands stretching out beside his hips as if to say, _here. Reach out and feel if you don’t believe it for yourself, feel the way blood still pumps underneath my flesh even though my heart might not beat like a normal person’s does._

But Yuri’s hands stay knitted across his chest, and Byleth supposes he doesn’t fault the man that. If someone else came back after five years with hair that glows like some sort of particularly toxic sludge, would he want to touch, either?

Yuri’s gaze traces Byleth’s hair now. "It’s been some time. Everyone thought you were dead.”

“I’m not.”

“Clearly.” Yuri’s smirk has rippling sensation traveling down Byleth’s spine. It’s the type of smile Byleth recognizes on Yuri, the sort he’s come to associate as only being for him. When Byleth steps closer, Yuri doesn’t pull away.

Byleth’s tongue is heavy in his mouth, certainly not the first time Yuri has brought out this feeling in him. There’s something about the man, something—bewitching, something that sends him away from their interactions feeling a little embarrassed, a little aroused, like he’s been touched all over even with the careful distance Yuri keeps. 

_I like seeing that you’re well,_ Byleth wants to say. And then, _but have you been well? Have you been eating? Or have you been feeding the children again while you go hungry? If you keep doing that, you’ll starve, Yuri, and then what will I do? Who will I fight for? Or think about before I sleep?_

He says none of it.

Instead he asks, “did you think me dead?”

Yuri’s beautiful face twists in a rough grimace.

“What?” Byleth asks, and steps closer still. He’s well into Yuri’s space, and when Yuri looks at him, there’s a tenderness in the lilac eyes that knocks Byleth’s breath from the cavity of his chest.

“Follow me,” Yuri says, and gestures with the pull of one delicate finger. “I want to show you something.”

-

Abyss’ lights are kept low, at a state where it is almost impossible to see where they are going, and yet Byleth follows without question. He’s long resigned himself to the fact that this is simply how it is with Yuri. The Mockingbird doesn’t divulge his plans. He doesn’t share more than he absolutely must. He pulls Byleth along as though Byleth is a fish impaled on Yuri’s hook, and Yuri a merciless, sadistic fisherman.

And Goddess, but Byleth lets him, for better or for worse.

Yet, Byleth isn’t unsettled by being down here again, or his company. Far from. Now at least there are no eyes on him. And since he’s returned the eyes have been the most uncomfortable thing of all.

Instead, he revels in watching Yuri as they travel beneath the flickering, low torches. As Yuri is cast into shadow, and then illuminated by light again, off and on in an endless dichotomy. Yuri has changed in these years, Byleth notes; his shoulders are broader, his hair long enough to kiss the middle of his back. Byleth wonders if it was lines he caught earlier on Yuri’s face, just between his brows—if worry has found its way into Yuri’s perfect skin. Oh, and now it’s regret that twists at Byleth’s gut.

How different could things have been if he had stayed?

“You’re staring,” Yuri comments, and it’s moments before Byleth notices that Yuri’s head has turned to peer at him.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Yuri’s hand waves a dismissal; it draws Byleth on, tugging at the hook thrust deep in his tongue. “I’m used to the way men look at me.”

-

Yuri’s quarters are small and unassuming, although Byleth supposes his own aren’t much different. There’s a compact in front of a salvaged mirror, and weapons splayed across a towel in a corner beside a capped bottle that reeks of silver polish. Byleth sits on the bed because it’s the only place to sit. Yuri stoops over an antique desk, and rummages in the drawers.

Byleth wets his lips with his tongue. “I’m glad you have your own room.”

“Are you?” Yuri’s tone drips with insinuation, and the back of Byleth’s neck grows warm and uncomfortable.

“I mean—“

“I was teasing you.” Yuri’s tongue clicks as his arm sinks deeper into the drawer, and Byleth wonders just what it is he’s keeping in there, anyway. Just what sort of things the Savage Mockingbird sees fit to bury away, keep in the dark and secret.

Byleth feels an odd jealousy of the items in the drawer. He suppresses it, fingers twisting on quilted bedsheets.

“Ahh, here it is. My old friend.” Yuri extracts a worn-looking journal, crafted of brown leather and embossed with a shining, gold letter E. Byleth blinks at it.

“You don’t remember?” Yuri sounds disappointed.

“No. No. I do.” Byleth gives his head a little shake for his disobedience, and looks back at Yuri. “Your journal, where you write the names of those who have died.”

“Precisely.” 

Yuri’s smile is warm, and Byleth basks beneath the praise. Yuri settles beside him, the old, worn mattress dipping beneath the weight of two men and their armor teetering at the precipice. Yuri opens the book.

“It must have been—“ his voice trails off in a lilting, secondhand melody. He flips through pages of names all in a neat script. “Here.”

He points to a space between two names Byleth doesn’t recognize.

“What was there?”

Byleth catches Yuri’s gaze, and swallows at whatever is swimming within those eyes. It’s something tender, something he can’t quite discern. Because he’s not really been looked at like this before. Not really.

“That was your spot,” Yuri tells him, tone cut and shallow. “Where your name would have been, had you died.”

Byleth blinks down at it. “I’m not there.”

“Very astute.” Yuri snickers. “Precisely, my dear, _smart_ Professor, you’re not.”

Byleth looks at the list of names again; a first, sometimes a last, sometimes a title. Beside them all, a date and a place. _The gardens outside Sanctimony's Tavern. A well in town. Felled by my own blade in the mud of the horse’s stables and left to be discovered._

“You didn’t give up on me.”

“I couldn’t.” Yuri shrugs, and turns a wry smile towards Byleth, and Byleth is— _warmed_ by it, warmed in a way he doesn’t think he’s been in his conscious years. His pulse beats through his veins even though he can’t feel his heart. His stomach twists with nerves.

He reaches across the expanse of bedsheets, and curls his fingers around Yuri’s.

“Why?”

“I asked myself that, time and time again,” Yuri whispers. His free hand curls into a fist over his chest. “I’ve never been the sort to shut up and _believe_ , believe like a good little boy who is told to do something with no validation, no meaning, no reason good enough to convince me—I needed to see it myself, see your body. Or some proof. And I didn’t, so I kept you out of my book.”

Byleth smiles something soft down at the page, and flips it shut. Yuri affords him a surprised look.

“You won’t have to add me in there for a long time,” Byleth swears, and leans forward in an act of heroics he’s not sure he ever could have summoned up before this second awakening.

He kisses Yuri’s lips, and tastes lipstick.

-

A fire burns inside Yuri’s chest. Byleth has known this to be a truth for some time. He knows Yuri to be a determined, passionate man, knows him to be blunt at times, coy at others, an irredeemable tease regardless of the two, all the while fueled by something too hot to touch kept jailed inside his ribs.

It’s nothing compared to the way they make love.

His armor is stripped from him slowly. Expertly, tenderly, but slowly enough that Byleth is trembling with the effort not to move too much, to reach up and assist with the latches and snaps he knows far better than Yuri does. He lets Yuri do it because he knows the man to want to learn. For future nights perhaps.

Or just for the sake of feeling those lithe fingers against him a little while longer.

Yuri’s kisses grow harsh and insistent; the press of lips are followed with the sting of teeth. Byleth suspects himself to be getting marked like a horse might receive a brand so as not to be lost to another farm in the future, and doesn’t mind it.

In fact, it feels so right he can hardly breathe.

“Are you certain about this?” He asks, with Yuri heavy on his thighs, their need pressing together insistently through layers and layers of clothing still to be removed.

“I’ve waited for five years,” Yuri tells him, and that’s that.

-

Yuri stokes the fire in Byleth’s stomach, coaxing it gently until Byleth cannot see straight for the way he, too, burns.

Those fingertips are cold as ice, and yet how they feel like flames as they travel down Byleth's torso. The sight of Yuri’s hard eyes between his thighs is enough to make Byleth keen, hitch his hips and ask for _more, already_ ; to be scolded with a sharp laugh. Yuri’s spit-slick tongue coiling around Byleth’s cock makes him shout.

He comes right there, comes on that pretty face, and Yuri looks as stunned as Byleth feels, sprawled across the bed, chest heaving as he tries to collect himself.

“Must have been a long five years,” Yuri snickers, before dropping his pants and crawling atop Byleth’s legs.

-

Yuri coaxes Byleth up to readiness, and eases himself onto Byleth’s cock. They sit against the wall, fingers tight in the others’ hair, sweat slicking the spaces their bodies touch, lips on the other’s.

“I missed you,” Yuri whispers, and it’s tender and soft and delicate, and Byleth wonders if this is what it’s like to fall in love.

His fingertips sink deep into the skinny, cold little body. He wants to leave his own marks in turn. At each tightening of his fingers, Yuri tenses, and hisses, and holds Byleth tighter than before.

Byleth thinks he sees Yuri unraveling, though he wouldn’t put it beyond the Mockingbird _not_ to come undone during sex, wouldn’t put it beyond Yuri never to drop his guard during even the most horrific traumas. And he feels it, he feels that trauma in the way Yuri’s fingers tighten at his throat as Byleth moves unexpectedly. In the wild panic in the premature lines on Yuri’s pretty face as Byleth’s thumbs press into his hips more roughly than he must have been expecting.

But Byleth lifts the corners, peeks underneath the stone Yuri has settled slab after slab in place to keep others from seeing the gentle being housed within the casings of his lithe body and ferocious words. When Byleth kisses Yuri’s neck, Yuri sobs in delight. Byleth touches the nook between Yuri’s ribs, just beneath his sternum, and Yuri laughs, and swats him away, and says he’s ticklish, and seems like he even means it from the way goosebumps line his pretty ivory skin.

And when Yuri comes, his fingers are wound hard and desperate in Byleth’s hair.

They settle into a knot of limbs in the bed, after Byleth has taken a cloth to their stomachs, to the sensitive area between Yuri’s legs. Now, Yuri allows each foreign, unexpected touch; he is collapsed, unresponsive.

He only moans a sound when Byleth tries to pull away to set the rag down.

“No, please—“ his fingers, Byleth’s shoulder. They meet in a tight grip. “Stay, would you? If you run, I can’t be held accountable for what it is I do and where I go, entirely nude, to get you back.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Byleth swears, and he means it.

-

It’s impossible to tell time of day so far beneath the surface—and then, perhaps it’s not. They hold one another tenderly until the candle has burned low, until all there is is Yuri’s words that flutter, soft as tissue, across Byleth’s nose and cheeks. Until Yuri’s forever-chilled fingers are warm from Byleth’s mouth.

It is when the walls around them begin to smell of soil that Byleth stirs.

He wonders if Yuri will object this time he pulls himself from the bedsheets, but receives none as he stands. The fabrics slip from his body as he hobbles across freezing floors, retrieving his clothes.

“You’re not supposed to know when it’s time to leave,” comes Yuri’s petulant voice from the bed. “That was the purpose of bringing you down here.”

“You had this all planned from the start, did you?”

Yuri laughs. “A good tactician never reveals his intentions, lest they play out ineffectively.”

Byleth turns to catch Yuri sitting upright, hair tousled and bedsheets drawn about his birdlike figure in such a way that he looks almost etherial. A creature that might emerge with the mists of early morning in search of wildflowers and honey, a god of the hunt.

And perhaps he is, for how he has captured Byleth in his long-fingered hands.

Byleth dresses, and returns to the bed. He stoops over Yuri’s nude form. Yuri’s fingers curl around his wrists as Byleth’s hands cup his cheeks.

“Don’t you leave me again, Professor,” Yuri lilts.

“I wouldn’t dare.” He didn’t want to the first time.

They kiss, and Byleth tastes himself on Yuri’s tongue.

The rising sun greets Byleth as he steps outside the tunnels and to the sloping hillside that leads upwards to Garreg Mach. He fancies himself reborn.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Twitter!](http://twitter.com/iliawrites)


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